An expressway is being built to link Shanghai to neighboring Jiangsu Province. It will open by the end of next year, said the highway's constructors yesterday.

The new six-lane expressway is called route A16 or the Jiangsu-Shanghai expressway. Its Jiangsu section has already been completed.

Shanghai's section is 7.9 kilometers long and will start in Kunshan, at the very south of Jiangsu Province and reach Shanghai's Qingpu District.

Railway authorities in Jiangsu also announced an adjustment to the design of the Shanghai-Nanjing express train line. The new design will have a larger proportion of elevated tracks, which will mean faster travel times. The future speed limit on the route has been raised from 250 kilometers per hour to 300km/h.

Shanghai and Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu, will be about 50 minutes apart by rail when the line opens in 2010. Currently, a trip by train from Shanghai to Nanjing takes 2 hours.